Women in prostitution are documented victims of serial killers, both hisrorically and in the present day. I Jack the Ripper-probably the most infamous serial killer in the Anglophone world-was the alias given to a person who murdered and mutilated at least four and possibly up to eight women, many of whom were allegedly prostitutes, in the Whitechapel area of London in 1888.' While not the first serial killer, Jack the Ripper became a household name primarily because the gruesome details of the case were covered by an emerging popular press, keen to expose manifest social injustice in the context of rapid industrialization to an increasingly literate general population.:' Media coverage capitalized on local concerns by portraying London's East End as a hot-bed of vice, stressing either "the need for social reform to alleviate the poverty causing crime" or berating the metropolitan police for failing to protect lower-class women by catching the perpetrator." The "Ripper" appellative is now routinely attached to serial-murder hunts by the tabloid press.

Women in prostitution are documented victims of serial killers, both hisrorically and in the present day. I Jack the Ripper-probably the most infamous serial killer in the Anglophone world-was the alias given to a person who murdered and mutilated at least four and possibly up to eight women, many of whom were allegedly prostitutes, in the Whitechapel area of London in 1888.' While not the first serial killer, Jack the Ripper became a household name primarily because the gruesome details of the case were covered by an emerging popular press, keen to expose manifest social injustice in the context of rapid industrialization to an increasingly literate general population.:' Media coverage capitalized on local concerns by portraying London's East End as a hot-bed of vice, stressing either "the need for social reform to alleviate the poverty causing crime" or berating the metropolitan police for failing to protect lower-class women by catching the perpetrator." The "Ripper" appellative is now routinely attached to serial-murder hunts by the tabloid press.